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Obama's Statement of Administrative Action on TPP: What is it?

August 15, 2016

by Michael Stumo

Still pushing the zombie TPP forward, the White House sent a draft Statement of Administrative Action (SAA) to Congress. It describes how the TPP will change US laws to comply with the globalist trade treaty.

The administration has been deploying every cabinet official it can find, even the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to travel around this August to push the stupid trade deal. The TPP is more important, apparently, than helping Hillary Clinton win the White House.

The draft SAA must be submitted to Congress for the President to take the next step, sending TPP implementing legislation to Congress. It is the implementing legislation that is subject to Fast Track in that Congress cannot amend it and must vote it up or down within a period of time.

Recall that Obama said, at Nike headquarters on May 8 2015: “Critics warn that parts of this deal would undermine American regulation. They’re making this stuff up. This is just not true. No trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws.”

Somebody was making stuff up, but not us critics. The SAA makes clear that the TPP rules will change federal law, supercede state and local laws and give rise to new regulations to comply. Because US law does not comply now.

Page 4 of the Statement of Administrative Action says: "The implementing bill, including the authority granted to federal agencies to promulgate implementing regulations, is intended to bring U.S. law fully into compliance with U.S. obligations under the TPP Agreement. The bill accomplishes that objective with respect to federal legislation by amending existing federal statutes that would otherwise be inconsistent with the Agreement and, in certain instances, by creating entirely new provisions of law."

On state law, the White House made clear on page 5 of the SAA that "The TPP Agreement’s rules generally cover state and local laws and regulations...".

On federal regulations, page 6 of the TPP says: "Section 103(a) of the bill provides the authority for new or amended regulations to be issued, and for the President to proclaim actions implementing the provisions of the TPP Agreement, as of the date the TPP Agreement enters into force for the United States."

The votes are not there. But the US Chamber, President Obama, the cosmopolitan elite globalists, the Business Roundtable and the import cheerleaders at Cato and the American Enterprise Institute continue to push.